
¶ 34
State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (1888)
The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
¶ 34
State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (1888)
Source: Pierrette (1840), Ch. IV: Pierrette.
Context: Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most social matters.
1930s, Speech to the Democratic National Convention (1936)
Context: It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.
“I'm not a body with a soul, I'm a soul that has a visible part called the body.”
Source: Eleven Minutes